question three
Do we need more managers doing management or more people being leaders?
That depends on what your organisation needs to do, needs to achieve and how you want to run your business!
And this is one the first questions we ask when we are invited to talk about leadership within an organisation!
If what you want is effective skilled managers able, willing, accountable and capable of implementing plans, supervising tasks and keeping the troops on the straight and narrow then you need managers!
If you want your managers to train your employee base to respond flexibly to the changing needs of your business you need managers prepared to engage in some elements of leadership.
However if what you want is more than task completion, more than implementation, more than metrics you needs more leaders and more people able to lead.
If what your business needs in the future is not just flexibility but adaptability, with employees able to recognise for themselves the need to change and the nature of the change required then you need strong capable and very genuine leaders able to create the environment where your employees true potential can be realised. The question then becomes how you go about developing leaders in your organisation and attracting new talent to your pool?
The emergentedge approach to leadership development is centred on four key phases of learning:
Leading Self – managers don't really need to be highly self aware, although it is clear that the better managers in any organisation are able to flex their style to suit changing situations and circumstances. Leaders, however, need to be mindful of their personal styles and habits in almost every interaction that they engage in. Leadership is personal and the ability to lead with authenticity, passion and credibility is central to this phase of development.
Leading Others – recognising that leaders require an ability to generate 'followship' rather than compliance is at the very heart of this phase of development. People are different. They require motivating in different ways. They need to be spoken to in different ways. And they certainly react in different ways. The 'New-Leaders' need a new range of skills and capabilities to encourage the very best from our people – see the 12 principles of Field Intelligence.
Leading The Business – it is clear that our leaders require a level of business acumen and a comfort with a broad spectrum of business approaches if they are truly going to participate in 'running the business' – irrespective of which level they are within the organisation. This phase is built on greater recognition of core business processes and the ability to lead other leaders, lead peers and lead cross-functional groups.
Leading the Future – there is no doubt that our potential leaders need to anticipate trends, observe the early warning signs of business failure and recognise opportunities to take step-function decisions in business approaches. This phase of our approach is, therefore, focused on the leaders ability to gather information, scan the business environment and sense the next move without the 'scorecard' data to back it up.